Having already been away from home for week, I craved Chinese cuisine.  We rode the tube to Piccadilly Circus, and wandered to find Chinatown on Gerrard Street — an easy street to remember, since the Chinatown at home bears the same name.

With the history of the Tavistock Institute at top of mind, we rode the tube up to Swiss Cottage to look at the Tavistock Clinic.  The Institute and Clinic used to be colocated, but are now independent entities.  On a late Sunday evening, the facilities were closed.

As a change from riding the London underground, we decided to return to the hotel on a double decker bus to see more of the city.  We rode from Swiss Cottage on a path including Wellington Road, to Victoria Station.

The next day, I acted as scribe while Gary conducted an interview with Sir Richard Bowlby, on the ties between the research between by John Bowlby and cybernetics.  Upon learning that the Bowlby archives are at the Wellcome Library, Gary and I decided to change our travel plans to reroute back through London for one day.

Accommodating a tight schedule, Dav and LJ met us at Paddington Station a few hours before we caught the train to Oxford.  LJ found a pub and then a restaurant nearby, after consulting Internet reviews on her mobile phone.

We continued our journey up to Oxford for the 2009 UK Systems Society meeting.  Before the meeting started, Rafael Ramirez suggested that we meet him at Green Templeton College, where he’s a Fellow.

Inside the Radcliffe Observatory, Gary, Minna and I were privileged to have a relaxed conversation with Rafael in the Common Room.

Aside from UKSS meetings at St. Anne’s College, we had one afternoon free for sightseeing.  One of the distinctive places on campus is a church site converted with a cafe:  Vaults and Gardens.

Our original plans had been to travel northeast from Oxford to Hull direct, with Jennifer.  With the opportunity to deepen the the research base in the Bowlby archives, we bought ourselves an extra day in London with a routing southeast back to the city.  This time, we booked into a hotel in Bloomsbury, coincidentally close to Tavistock Square, the original neighbourhood for the Tavistock Institute and Clinic.

Walking through Bedford Square, we noticed an installation by the Design and Make program of the Architectual Association school.  Following the tradition of summer pavilions mounted since 2005, the 2009 Driftwood Pavilion was larger than human scale.

Research at the Wellcome Library took much of the Thursday.  Registration requires issuing a card to access the reading rooms.  Then, in the special archives room, we consulted the indexes to make requests for specific packages to be brought up from storage.  After lunch, the librarians walked us through how original handwritten documents are to be handled.  Gary sorted through the records, and I transcribed key passages onto the computer.

Reading the 1957-58 list of fellows visiting at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, we found some notable names beside John Bowlby, including David Easton, Milton Friedman, Talcott Parsons, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Bruce Quarrington, Claude Shannon, Robert Solow, George Stigler and John Tukey.  I was amused at a letter about a “laissez-faire tennis match”.  The Bowlby archives included handwritten letters home and to colleagues.

Gary uncovered a lead to proceedings of World Health Organization meetings between 1953 and 1956, where John Bowlby participated in meetings in Ludwig von Bertalanffy.  This was irrefutable evidence of ties to the systems community, facts in the resulting report on “John Bowlby – Rediscovering a systems scientist“.

By late afternoon, we had exhausted the Bowlby archives.  Gary and I relaxed on the train from London Kings Cross up to York, where Jennifer picked us up.

Most of the Friday was taken up with research discussions with the Centre for Systems Studies at Hull University.

The late afternoon afforded us sufficient daylight for sightseeing in York.  Many of the shops in The Shambles were closing, as we toured.

We concluded the evening with an Indian dinner as Saffron Desi, where the bread (nan) is served hanging on a rack.

Gary left on the early Saturday morning train to return home.  I hung out for another day, trailing Jennifer and Amanda in their shopping.  This happened to be one of the days of the York Festival of Traditional Dance, where groups of Morris Dancers were performing all over town.

On the Sunday, I was back on the train to London, and over to Heathrow to catch a plane.  Instead of flying westwards towards home, however, I was destined eastward back to Helsinki for another 5 days around the university.

[Start a large-image lightbox screen show over this blog post (in a supported browser)]

[See the London South Bank album of 9 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the Chinatown Tavistock album of 30 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the Bowlby interview album of 3 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the Green Templeton College album of 10 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the Oxford album of 67 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the Euston-Russell Square album of 53 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the Hull album of 7 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the York album of 54 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

[See the York Traditional Dance album of 36 webphotos (with a slideshow option)]

At the northwest corner of Queen Street East at Broadview Avenue is the New Broadview House Hotel. The strip club on the ground floor marks the neighbourhood as ungentrified, although rumours of a renovation into boutique hotel sometimes appear.

On the southeast corner of Queen Street East and Broadview Avenue is a caribbean restaurant, The Real Jerk. The bright colours make it a landmark, and disguise the prior history of the building as former branch of the Royal Bank.

The 504 King streetcar comes from downtown, follows Queen Street East for a few blocks, and then turns north onto Broadview Avenue.

The Cai Yuan store at the southeast corner of Broadview Avenue and Gerrard Street always has large displays of fresh fruit outside facing north, and vegetables and packaged goods facing west.

On the south side of the Gerrard Street, as the next building east, is a branch of Trinity Supermarket. This building was renovated a few years ago, and I shop here often.

Past the fruit and vegetables out on the sidewalk, the supermarket entrance is downstairs. There’s a butcher in the back of the store.

On the west wall inside is a freezer case displaying many types of fresh noodles, as well as the tofu that I usually buy.

After loading up with groceries, I sometimes bike back to one of our son’s favourite take-out places on Broadview Avenue: Miao Ke Hong Bakery.

Noah prefers the baked buns, and Ryan prefers the steamed buns. I normally pick up a tray and load up a selection, which gets boxed up for transport home.

The bakery is normally the last stop before going home. Two boxes of buns under a bungie cord is relatively secure … as long as I’m not in a hurry.

Making the right turn back onto Gerrard Street heads me eastbound towards home. The other major Chinese store in the area is Fu Yao. It’s a toss-up whether I shop in one store or the other, but Fu Yao often has a display of rice dumplings in banana leafs — zhong, in the Toisan dialect — which isn’t as good as my grandmother used to make, but is still handmade (and better than I could ever do).

From Gerrard Street East, I turn south onto Boulton Avenue. This is immediately a residential neighbourhood, with a church on the corner at First Avenue.

Continuing on Boulton Avenue across Dundas Street is the primary school that all of our sons attended: Dundas Junior Public School.

Down to Queen Streeet, and it’s a few blocks to home. I really enjoy shopping on bicycle, and it’s a good break from sitting at my computer. The weather isn’t always as good as this, but bicycling is a good alternative to driving the short distance.

To the north is the typical Paris traffic circle.

Around the corner and walking south, the street mixed residential, with a typical neighbourhood places.

Down Avenue de Choisy were non-French restaurants (e.g. Japanese) and small hotels (not obviously corporate class).

Near the next major intersection, the number of restaurants increased. I noticed that the cuisine was less Chinese than Indochine, i.e. Vietnamese. This isn’t uncommon, as the Vietnamese “boat people” were often ethnic Chinese.

From the six-way intersection, the first street southwest quickly became residential.

Looking down the other street going southeast, I saw at least four variations of Vietnamese cuisine.

As a symptom of being away from home too much, I decided that I really wanted Chinese food, and chose the “duck hanging in the window” restaurant. I ordered steamed chicken. It was chicken, but it wasn’t as tender and flavourful as is standard in Cantonese restaurants. If I’m in Paris again, I’ll take the hint, and choose Vietnamese menus instead.

Chinatown in DC isn’t more than a few blocks long. There’s probably fewer than ten Chinese restaurants there.

The next afternoon, in the daylight, the approach to the gate from the east can be seen more easily. On the left (south) side, the entry to the subway isn’t obvious.

Walking to the other side of the gate, the view from the west side shows the building at the southwest following the Chinese theme.

For a little sightseeting, I turned south to walk down 7th Street NW. This shows a human-scale Washington DC. There’s some restaurants on the street, possibly supported by the movie theatre and arena on the other side of the street.

Continuing south, the small shops give way to federal buildings. The National Portrait Gallery was under construction for the fall.

Since streets running in more than a grid pattern in DC, there’s strange intersections now and then. Here’s one at the Navy Memorial.

At Pennsylvania Avenue, turning east — or is that north-east? — the Capitol Building is prominent.

Constitution Avenue takes a weird turn southwest from Pennsylvania Avenue. The Washington Monument is hard to miss.

On the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Canadian Embassy has more contemporary architecture.

Crossing the street and climbing the steps onto the plaza, the front entry seems to be designed to preclude intruders who might crash the door.

Getting closer to the building, the fountain in the front has the Spirit of Haida Gwaii sculpture that reflects that Canadians are all in the same boat, together.

Turning around to look back towards the street, the colonnade is an interesting structure. I’m not sure if it really has a function.

Walking around the building to the northeast side isn’t the side that most tourists would recognize. Visitors to Canada might see this view more frequently, though, as visas are issued from a door on this side. The street behind isn’t as grand as Pennsylvania Avenue, but I think that the Canadian embassy looks better from this perspective.

The warm fall weather was a good opportunity to get out of the hotel room, and just walk around the city.

The harbour is to the south, but we weren’t particularly interested in walking down to see the maritime museum.

Kobe is a modern city. As we crossed the street, a stylish pedicab reinforced that image.

In an alley between some buildings, we could see a tower erected as a memorial of the 1995 earthquake. In this area of the city, all of the properties were leveled, so there aren’t any old buildings anymore.

We walked south and west, looking for Chinatown — one of the oldest in Japan. Before we figured out where it was, we found a torii — a Japanese symbol, not Chinese!

We encountered more covered shopping arcades on the way. Presumably the weather isn’t sufficiently cold in Japan to make fully enclosed shopping malls the norm.

Outside of the Daimaru department store was one of those intersections where traffic from all directions stop, and the pedestrians can cross anywhere.

Down the street we discovered the east gate in Chinatown.

Chinatowns in most cities look about the same. In Kobe, though, the street and buildings are modern, reconstructed after the earthquake.

Chinatown wasn’t very busy, just before dusk. The stores were packing up to close, and it was too early for salarymen to go out for drinks. We could have picked up steamed buns or dumplings to go, but thought that a sit-down restaurant would serve a meal with more vegetables.

Looking at one of the signs, we picked what looked like a Cantonese restaurant. We pointed at a sample that we thought was beef with greens. It turned out to be liver with green onions. We could almost understand the conversations between waitress and the restaurant owner. Our guess: with the street named Nanjing Road, these Chinese may have been from southern China, but it’s as far north in southern China as you can be. The dishes looked Cantonese, but they tasted differently — in a style not necessarily explained by the mostly Japanese clientele.

After dinner, Diana and I went over to the Daimaru to take a look at the basement supermarket. There was a store selling the local specialty: Kobe beef. Protecting it behind glass may indicate that its price could be higher than jewellery!

Since Diana was dissatisfied at the meal in Chinatown, we took advantage of the end-of-day discounts on ready-made food. The maki sushi didn’t last past that evening, but we kept the dumplings in the refrigerator in our hotel room to add some variety to the breakfast for the next few days.